Helping Others Rebuild Their Brokenness

The premise for my current sermon series through Nehemiah is that we can rebuild our broken world if we walk with God as Nehemiah did. However, we can go even further in rebuilding our broken worlds by helping others rebuilt theirs. While we will deal with that in the sermon series, I want to emphasis that even further in this space. Helping people rebuild their broken worlds is after all a part of the church’s mission.

Al Sherrill, pastor of a church in Manhattan, New York, gives an example, in the current issue of Leadership of a lady in his church who did just that. Her name is Ellen. She works in the fashion industry and was placed on a team in her company with a woman whose presence she had begun to dread. Then her coworker was handed a two week notice of termination. She was a single mother of a teenage girl and was already $5,000 behind on rent and was receiving repeated eviction threats posted on her door.

The woman had long since given up any faith that she had. So Ellen sent an email with the subject “Urgent” to fellow believers. She concluded the email by writing, "Would you prayerfully consider joining me in raising $5,000 for this woman over the next 48 hours? I think that showing radical generosity in the name of Jesus will be a powerful display of God's heart towards her in this time. May God's mercy be released over her life through this."

In response to Ellen's plea for a few people to join in resolving her coworker's plight, within two days she arrived to work carrying a sealed envelope. Laying it on her coworker's desk, Ellen informed the woman that there were a few folks at church who believed in her comeback. Later that day Ellen sent an email to those who supported the cause. It read:

"So thankful to share the story of today with you. I wrote a letter to her this morning, and put the full amount in the envelope. I wrote of grace being a free gift, that she is indebted to no one, and that all who gave did so out of the belief that they've received that same but infinitely greater gift of grace from God. When she came in and read the letter, she called me to her office and embraced me weeping. She said she'd never received unconditional help before, and that it was the most profound thing she's experienced. 'Thank God, thank God,' she kept saying. She is now able to stay in her apartment. She has a promising job interview next week.

"Later in the day, another coworker came to me with tears in her eyes and hugged me. The woman had told her what transpired, and said, 'Not only have you changed her life, but you've revived my faith as well.' Just last night she had told her husband that she felt her faith in Jesus was dead. She said that in all her life she had never seen such a thing, and it reminded her of truth."

All stories may not be that dramatic, but, as Sherrill tells it, this was the first time Ellen had seen her job as a place to live out her faith. It was the first time she stepped to help someone else rebuild their brokenness.

The rebuilding of our own brokenness is a result of God pouring his grace into our lives through Jesus Christ. Our mission is to help others rebuild their lives by offering them God’s grace.